Kayla Rae Whitaker

From age eighteen on, I had a partner, a kindred spirit. I had a friend. Someone bound and determined to keep me from the worst in myself. At a private East Coast college, two young women meet in art class. Sharon, ambitious but lacking confidence, arrives from rural Kentucky. Mel, brash and wildly gifted, brings her own brand of hellfire...

Following her dazzling (The Guardian) debut, The Animators, Kayla Rae Whitaker tells the sweeping story of one Southern family's rise and fall throughout the 1980s, a tragicomic tour de force about love and marriage, parents and children, and the promise and limitations of the American Dream. Baker-Taylor's is a family business. Fran (née Baker) and Fred Taylor run a successful...